Arts Blog

Word below from neighborsgo:

The Richardson-based community opera company, The Living Opera, has announced the postponement of their 2009 season to 2010 in a statement from Michael Collier Bradley, opera board chairman.

"As opera-lovers throughout the U.S. know, the recession has already made 2009 a difficult season for opera companies, and many companies of long-standing have closed their doors," Bradley said. "The Living Opera has not been spared."

"After a series of fundraising events the board regretfully decided at its meeting on May 19 that there were insufficient funds to mount our 2009 season as planned, and we have therefore deferred our season until 2010.

A few seats down the row from us at the opening of "As Thousands Cheer" at Lyric Stage tonight, Broadway director-choreographer Kathleen Marshall was sitting with Mr. (and I take it Mrs.) Roger Horchow. Marshall directed the Tony-winning Broadway revival of "Pajama Game" three seasons ago, but national audiences know her best as the director of the more recent "Grease" revival -- partly because she was one of the judges on the reality TV star search for the musical, "You're the One That I Want."

Marshall's connection with Horchow is that she choreographed his super version of "Kiss Me, Kate" (can it really have been a decade ago?!). I hear she's also good friends with former "Forbidden Broadway" star Diana Sheehan, who's making a hilarious local debut in "As Thousands Cheer."

If you get to Irving Arts Center for the show, be sure to check out Mark Oristano's really interesting photography show, "Hollywood/1935." It features portraits of many local theatrical celebs -- but in the style of the old-line Hollywood glamour publicity photos. I especially liked the one of Jac Alder sitting in three Theatre Three seats simultaneously. The one of Regan Adair makes him look like a leading man of the era, too. I hear the show had previously been up at KD Studio Theatre, but I missed it there. Don't you miss out this time!

If you've tried to order tickets for the Fort Worth Opera festival and had problems, try again. The opera offices have had phone and internet snafus off and on since Friday, but all is now working.

The festival opens Saturday with "Carmen," with "Cinderella" opening Sunday afternoon. "Dead Man Walking" launches May 2.

Call 817-731-0726 or go to www.fwopera.org.

Saturday will be "Speight Jenkins Day" in Seattle, thanks to a mayoral proclamation honoring Dallas-born Speight Jenkins for 25 years as general director of Seattle Opera.

Jenkins is widely credited with raising Seattle Opera to national prominence, notably with a series of Wagner "Ring" Cycles. Before moving into opera administration, we was a music critic.

Ten young singers won prizes in the Dallas Opera Guild Vocal Competition Saturday. The contest was held in Gooch Auditorium at the UT Southwestern Medical Center.

For the first time in the competition's 21 years, two singers--baritones Steven LaBrie and Michael Sumuel--both were awarded the $6,500 first prize. No award was given for second place. Mezzo Catherine Martin took third place ($3,000) and soprano Icy Simpson won the People's Choice award ($1,000). Two $500 encouragement awards went to tenor Juan Jose De Leon and Mary-Jane Lee. Four additional finalists received $200 awards.

The annual competition is open to Texas singers 18 to 30 who aspire to professional careers.

I have been meaning to catch up with Mark-Brian Sonna Productions since I had a tip from a trusted reader last year that the company's unorthodox interpretation of Dante's Inferno was really interesting. (My previous experiences with the for-profit group, which produces a full season at Addison's Stone Cottage, hadn't been all that encouraging.) So I ventured a look at the first performance of a new translation of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex by Ian Johnston last night -- a world premiere for this version.

While the show doesn't work entirely, I found it more interesting than the other MBS shows I have seen. It plays to Sonna's strenghts (he's a trained dancer with a love for the classics as well as a passion for mounting new work). Continue after the break to see my thoughts in more detail.

Soprano Ava Pine all but stole the show in the Dallas Opera's December 2008 "Die Fledermaus." Now Pine, who started around here singing lighter fare with the Orpheus Chamber Singers and our early-music groups, is singing Pamina in the Florentine Opera Company's "Magic Flute." The three performances, at Milwaukee's Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, are April 17, 18 and 19.

Pine was booked as the Milwaukee opera company's sixth Marie Z. Uihlein Artist, funded by an endowment established in 2004.

Ned Rorem's operatic version of the Thornton Wilder classic is getting four performances in Denton, thanks to the University of North Texas Opera. Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday (4/3), Saturday (4/4) and Tuesday (4/7), and at 3 p.m. Sunday (4/5) in the Lyric Theater of the Murchison Performing Arts Center, at I-35E and N. Texas Blvd. Conductor Stephen Dubberly will give a talk one hour before each performance.

Tickets are $15 to $35; $35 tickets include dessert and wine. For information, call 940-369-7802 or go to www.thempac.com.

Here I was, dying to hear Christine Brewer's Brunnhilde in the Met's "Ring" Cycle, coming up next month. But today came word that she's withdrawn from all scheduled performances because of a knee injury. Her place will be taken by Irene Theorin and Katarina Dalayman.

The Dallas Opera has another partner, the State Opera of South Australia, in commissioning and performing the forthcoming Jake Heggie opera Moby-Dick.

Based on the famous Herman Melville novel, the opera will be premiered at the new Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Winspear Opera House in April 2010. After six performances here, it will go on to the four other companies co-commissioning the new work: San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, Calgary Opera and the Australian company.

The new opera, with libretto by Gene Scheer, will be presented in Adelaide in 2011.
Star tenor Ben Heppner will sing the lead role of Captain Ahab, with Morgan Smith as Starbuck and Stephen Costello as Ishmael.

For information and tickets for the Dallas Opera's 2009-2010 season, call 214-443-1000 or go to www.dallasopera.org.

I had an email from my friend Dick Grote about being onstage during the Dallas Opera's L'Italiana in Algeri, its final production at the Fair Park Music Hall. Dick is a nationally recognized author and consultant on employee evaluation. I got to know him while he was volunteering as a Rabin Award nominator for the apparently defunct Dallas Theatre League. Here's the beginning of his account:

I had read a press release from the opera saying that they were looking for supernumeraries. I was pretty sure I'd land a part, since they said in the press release that they were looking for males who were "tall, brawny, and stupid-looking." I was cast as one of four Algerians. My job was really that of a stagehand in costume, but it did give me the chance to be part of an opera production. I'm now a professional performer -- for three weeks of rehearsals six days a week and four performances, I was paid $130!

We had three weeks of rehearsal and then four performances at the huge, 3200-seat Music Hall at Fair Park. What made it particularly meaningful was that after 52 years of performing in the Music Hall, next year the Dallas Opera will be moving to a brand-new facility downtown. This was the final performance after 52 years. Jacqueline [his wife] came to three of the four performances (she missed the Sunday matinee performance since she was a volunteer for the cast party that followed).

He was the preppy New Yorker who lasted only four months as general director of the Dallas Opera. He talked big, but didn't seem very interested in bread-and-butter operas, or how an opera company actually runs. Then, after denying any interest in the vacant top job at the New York City Opera, what did he do but snatch it right up and ditch Dallas? We can only wish him well in his new gig, but there were, shall we say, few tears shed here.

Just before and after the NYCO appointment, he was all the buzz on opera blogs--and the butt of many an unkind jab on the gay opera 'zine Parterre Box. He's been conspicuously absent lately on Parterre Box, but he's featured in this week's New York Magazine, in a piece by Justin Davidson:

http://nymag.com/arts/classicaldance/classical/features/55493/

Acknowledging City Opera's uncertain prospects, Davidson is pretty equivocal about the impresario's future at Lincoln Center. Oh, and there's a delicious quote from Jonathan Pell, the Dallas Opera's director of artistic administration. I'm noted as the author of a "dyspeptic" post-mortem on Steel's tenure here.

American Actors Company, the Baylor University-based professional theater, took Craig Wright's The Unseen to New York's Cherry Lane Theatre this week. (The same production was one of the hits at last years Out of the Loop Festival at WaterTower Theatre, remember?) Variety gave it a very respectful review, but seemed a little nonplussed that a Baptist university does theater. No word yet from The New York Times.

Media types had a chance to meet new Dallas Center for the Performing Art pres/CEO Mark Nerenhausen Monday. Nerenhausen took over last week, after 11 years running the Brouward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Nerenhausen is a man of no few words. Did any single question elicit an answer less than five minutes long? As he admitted, being on the job only a week didn't prepare him for much in the way of specific answers. But that didn't stop him from philosophizing at length on things like "making the arts available." Prize statement: "Our job is to create desireable outcomes."

He did acknowledge that most new performing arts centers have run up deficits in their first years, but he said that's no different from startup businesses. He said there's a "three- to four-year cycle before a PAC really hits its stride."

He also said there are only about 30 performing arts complexes in the country, as opposed to one-off theaters, and only about 12 in the DCPA's league.

After dire warnings of traffic and parking issues for the Dallas Opera's "Italian Girl in Algiers" this weekend, no one was complaining at the opening Friday night. The North Texas Irish Festival, running through Sunday at Fair Park, is projected to draw as many as 50,000 people. And maybe crowds will be a problem for the opera's Sunday-afternoon performance. But they weren't Friday.

Parking for opera patrons will still be free, but people attending the festival will have to pay. Which means you won't just be able to drive right in -- so count on delays at the gates.

I hate it that Dallas Chamber Music has scheduled the Ying Quartet's concert on the same evening as the first performance of the Dallas Opera's "Italian Girl in Algiers."

I heard the Yings, four Chinese-American siblings who grew up in Chicago, when they were starting out as a quartet. That was 20 years ago, when they were all students at the Eastman School of Music and I was music critic of the since-vanished Rochester Times-Union. There was something really special about their playing right from the start, and I was hoping to hear them again. Alas, not this time.

The Dallas Opera had a nice box lunch for a few of us media types Friday with Jake Heggie, composer of the "Moby Dick" opera that Dallas will premiere in April 2010. Tenor Ben Heppner will star as Captain Ahab.

Herman Melville's hefty novel might seem a challenge to reduce to a three-hour opera. And Heggie, who has already turned Sister Helen Prejean's "Dead Man Walking" and Graeme Greene's "The End of the Affair" into operas, admitted, "We have to cut like crazy." But ultimately, he said the novel is about "one man's obsession with wanting to control the universe."

The idea for a "Moby Dick" opera originated with playwright Terrence McNally, the librettist for "Dead Man Walking." But when a second bout of lung cancer sidelined McNally, he yielded the project to Gene Scheer, librettist for "The End of the Affair" and a newer collaboration, "Three Decembers." Heggie and Scheer have also been working with dramaturg Leonard Foglia, who will direct the Dallas production.

Unlike that other great seafaring, Melville-based opera, Britten's "Billy Budd," this one will make considerable use of what Heggie called "Melville's ravishing, gorgeous language." Also unlike the Britten, Heggie's opera will have a part for a woman; the young Pip will be a "trousers role," to be sung by a soprano in boy drag.

The opera will be tried out in workshops in August, in San Francisco, after which Heggie expects there will be a good deal more cutting and pasting.

"It's lyrical," he says of the music in his work-in-progress, "but it's much denser and more complex than anything I have written."

If you're planning to go to the Dallas Opera's "Italian Girl in Algiers" this weekend, be warned about potential traffic and parking snarls in and around Fair Park. The North Texas Irish Festival is being held at Fair Park starting Friday at 6 p.m., and is expected to draw 50,000 visitors.

The opera is advising patrons to allow at least AN HOUR AND A HALF TO TWO HOURS to get to Fair Park and find a parking place.

Arrghh.

I enjoyed the story on adapting the iPod for classical music we printed today, but I have developed my own strategies.

I waited a long time before diving into the mp3/download world. What finally got me hooked was realizing that it was great for short works -- lieder, arias, etc. You can make your own programs (and here the shuffle feature is really great). I started out with Schubert lieder -- eventually getting about 2,000 performances into ITunes, including the whole Hyperion collection and the ongoing Naxos survey. (These have all been ripped from CDs I own.) More recently, I've been putting on Handel arias -- seems like a new recital comes out every couple of weeks, mostly recently from the unlikely Rolando Villazon.

I also started listening to jazz seriously again for the first time in many years. I won't even tell you how greedy I got about that.

All the practical tips in the story are good, but I found it useful to put each album (or sometimes group of album) on a playlist, and organize the playlists into folders. That makes it very simple to find a piece, but it is an extra step.

I've also really enjoyed downloading from EMusic.com. The site has loads of really offbeat releases from independents of all sorts, including classical. And the jazz....!

Scott Cantrell today taps Seattle Opera general director Speight Jenkins, San Francisco Opera's David Gockley of and Opera America's Marc A. Scorca to analyze what the Dallas Opera should be looking for in its next general director.

And here, on the blog, you can answer the same question, by using the "comments" button.

The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Winspear Opera House and Wyly Theatre are looking promising, with October openings planned for both. But this was a bad week elsewhere for the two buildings' architects: Foster + Partners for the opera house, Rem Koolhaas/OMA for the theater.

On Monday, Koolhaas' under-construction Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Beijing was destroyed by fire, apparently set off by illegal fireworks. (You'd think they'd design a big, high-visibility building like this to be a LITTLE more fire-resistant, wouldn't you?)

And a Foster-designed Harmon Hotel under construction in Las Vegas had to be clipped from the planned 49 stories to a stubby 28, after improperly installed rebar (the steel rods that hold concrete together) was discovered on 15 floors. Oops.

"Bnesbitt"'s comment on a previous blog entry on the Dallas Opera's search for (faux) eunuchs confused the Dallas Opera and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. It's the opera company that's looking, and cultivating, sexier images, not the orchestra.

But, although they'd probably deny it, orchestras are also looking to book, and market, sexier soloists. Notice all those pretty young female violinists and pianists--and a few handsome young males--showing up in concert brochures these days?

An irreverent list from LA Times art critic Christopher Knight:

The culture industry is cosmopolitan, so flag-waving options are few.
The culture industry is pluralistic, but Congress is only marginally so.
As corporations, arts institutions are nonprofit, so there's no money to be made via lobbyists.
Culture is girlie, not manly.
The arts often look at sexual experience -- eek!

That's what classical-music doomsayer Norman Lebrecht says on his blog, La Scena Musicale (www.scena.org. If so, that will be the end of one of classical music's most distinguished imprints, whose releases have included the legendary Georg Solti "Ring" Cycle, the first cycle of the complete Haydn symphonies and oodles of operas featuring the likes of Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti. For years distributed in North America on the "London" label, because of a copyright held on these shores by another Decca label, the English-based Decca was also a pioneer in higher-fidelity recording techniques.

Just when you think you've seen everything, here's a press release from the Dallas Opera seeking, among other things, EUNUCHS for an upcoming production of Rossini's "Italian Girl in Algiers." Also sought: imposing man to play "Vlad the Impaler" and two more to play guards. "Girth is no object," the release helpfully adds.

Don't worry: This is make-believe opera, and these are supernumeraries--"supers," for short: people who portray non-singing characters. No physical examinations--or orchiectomies (look it up)--are required.

Casting call is Tuesday (Feb. 10). Contact Emily Gast at The Dallas Opera for times and location: pa@dallasopera.org or 214.443.1037.

Even if you're, ahem, intact.

Check out Fort Worth Symphony music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya's English National Opera debut Wednesday (2/4) in the comfort of your own home. The web site www.classicaltv.com is offering a live transmission of "La boheme" (in English) from the London Colisseum at 1:30 p.m.

That's assuming London has cleared away the snow that caused cancellation of the opening performance Monday. Covent Garden cancelled its performance of Korngold's "Die tote Stadt" and bunches of theaters shut down for the evening.

The newest offering in Houston Grand Opera's 2009-2010 season will be Britten's 1954 "Turn of the Screw" -- this for a company with a proud history of premieres. But the six-production season does look interesting: new productions of "Lohengrin" and "Tosca," plus "Xerxes" (with a starry cast including Susan Graham, Laura Claycomb and David Daniels), "The Queen of Spades" and "The Elixir of Love." Check the web site--www.houstongrandopera.org--for details.

"No room! No room!" one of Cinderella's sisters wails over the glass slippers that won't fit. And surely every newspaper journalist sometimes feels the same -- more and more, as space gets tighter.

The Dallas Opera's "Roberto Devereux" had some glorious singing at the Friday night opening, and Graeme Jenkins had the orchestra playing elegantly. But about Stephen Lawless' staging I didn't have room to do much more than gripe about all the sitting, sliding and crawling on the floor. On the FLOOR, I say -- this for nobility at one of Europe's great courts and cultural centers.

The other thing I really hated was the big vitrines rolled around with Madame Tussaud figures (actually living ones, I think). The first three, seen during the overture, were presumably King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I's parents, and the young Elizabeth. At the end we saw Robert Devereux and I forget who else. The effect was gratuitous and silly.

I've always said the most important person in an opera company is the one who will just say "no" to directors' loonier ideas.

John T. Cody, Jr., who's starting his second stint as interim general director of the Dallas Opera, is one of three recipients of the National Opera Trustee Recognition Award. Presented by Opera America, a national service organization based in New York, the annual award honors trustees of U.S. opera companies for "exemplary leadershiip, generosity and audience building efforts."

A retired president and COO of J.C. Penney, John joined the Dallas Opera board in 1993 and served stints as both president and chairman of the opera board. He was interim general director between the departure of Karen Stone and the arrival of George Steel, who's stepping down after less than four months on the job to head New York City Opera. And opera insiders have nothing but good things to say about him.

John and two other honorees, from Lyric Opera of Kansas City and Piedmont Opera, will be honored at a February dinner and reception in New York.;

Jeremy Gerard of Bloomberg News is the latest to weigh in on George Steel's departure from the Dallas Opera.

He sums up the response among his local friends: "Dancing in the streets exaggerates only a bit. In Dallas, any tears shed over his departure would barely fill a thimble."

As a former Dallas Morning News critic, he notes that, "like Steel, I know something about being a New Yorker in Dallas. It can be a silly city. It has skyscrapers outlined in green neon. It's deeply obsessed with how the rest of the world sees it.

"Yet its self-confidence can be infectious. Tennessee Williams found refuge and solace there. Margo Jones practically invented theater-in-the-round on the same Texas State Fair grounds as the opera and guitarist Charlie Christian played electric jazz in the speakeasies of the Deep Ellum district. You just have to show a little curiosity to find the there there. "

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Los Angeles Opera has postponed the world premiere of Daniel Catan's "Il Postino."

The Spanish-language opera, based on the 1994 movie, was to have starred Placido Domingo. The project, announced in July 2005, had been scheduled to open the 2009-10 season.

Domingo, who's also the company's general director, says it would have been financially irresponsible in the current economic climate to program a world premiere in the same season as the Ring Cycle.

Instead, the season will open Sept. 12 with a revival of a 1996 production of Donizetti's "The Elixir of Love."

The company will present the first complete Los Angeles staging of Wagner's Ring Cycle in three full cycles May 29-June 26, 2010.

(Photo: Placido Domingo / AP)

Here's a full version of the story. Looking ahead ... John Cody, a previous board president and chairman, will serve as the interim general director.

Just announced, George Steel will be leaving the Dallas Opera. The early word ...

"The tottering New York City Opera said on Wednesday that it had found a savior after two years of financial and leadership turmoil, appointing the impresario and conductor George R. Steel as its general manager and artistic director."

The hot buzz in the opera world continues to be conjecture on whether George Steel will or will not leave the Dallas Opera to head New York City Opera. Steel, who became general director of Dallas Opera only in October, has admitted to having conversations with City Opera, which was left high and dry when Gerard Mortier said he'd take the job but then pulled out.

Steel has told Bloomberg that he's not in the running for the New York job. But the gossip continues, big time, notably on the campy opera 'zine Parterre Box (www.parterre.com). And a poll of Parterre readers has Steel at the top of the list of named possibilities for the NYCO job, with 17 percent of votes; other names include Renee Fleming, director Francesca Zambello and former Met general director Joe Volpe. The biggest slice of votes goes to "Some (expletive) Brit." (Dallas had two (non-expletives) in a row: Anthony Whitworth-Jones and Karen Stone.)

Not that Parterre readers have inside information, but I'll bet at least a couple do. A couple of responses comment on unhappiness with Steel among both Dallas Opera board and staff members, which has been whispered around here.

I've got a call in to George. Will let you know as soon as I hear anything from the horse's mouth.

The New York Times Sunday Travel section listed Dallas at No. 17 in its "44 Places to Go in 2009" story. The reason: the Dallas Arts District, with the Winspear Opera House and Wyly Theatre set to open in October. Dallas rated behind Vienna, the Galapagos and Hawaii, but ahead of Rome, the Florida Keys, Stockholm and Buffalo.

Funny: This major development wasn't noticed in a certain local newspaper's story on major local developments coming up in 2009.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The marquees of Broadway theaters will be dimmed in honor of playwright Harold Pinter.

The Broadway League says the lights will be dimmed for about one minute at 7 p.m. tonight.

The British Nobel laureate died last Wednesday at the age of 78 after a long battle with cancer. He won the Tony Award for best play in 1967 for "The Homecoming" and the Nobel Prize in literature in 2005.

Pinter wrote 32 plays, one novel and 22 screenplays. His masterpieces include "The Birthday Party" and "Betrayal."

His writing featured dialogue with pregnant pauses that reflected his characters' emotional struggles and inspired the phrase "Pinter-esque dialogue."

Classical music critic Scott Cantrell lists the top 10 events and people of 2008. Do you agree? Share your thoughts with us below.

Rumors that new Dallas Opera general director George Steel has been talking with New York City Opera about the general director's post there are confirmed in an item on Bloomberg.com. But Steel is quoted as saying, "I'm aware of the speculation that I'm a candidate. I'm not interested in the job at New York City Opera." He adds that he's "extremely happy" with the Dallas appointment.

The City Opera post is wide open after director-designate Gerard Mortier quit before even taking the job. Steel, who arrived in Dallas only in October, is well-known in New York for his 11 years at the helm of Columbia University's Miller Theatre in New York. And he has said he wants to be the Gerard Mortier of Dallas -- presumably referring to the Belgian impresario's penchant for innovative, even controversial programming, not for leaving a company in the lurch.

Whether Steel's talk about highly innovative programming in Dallas makes sense in the current economy is another matter.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has cancelled its May 2009 concert performances of "Madame Butterfly." Instead music director Jaap van Zweden will conduct the Brahms "Academic Festival" Overture and "Schicksalslied" (with the Dallas Symphony Chorus), and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and "1812" Overture.
The soloist for the violin concerto will be announced later.
The change avoids competing with the Dallas Opera's planned May 2010 staging of Madame Butterfly at the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Winspear Opera House. The new building opens next fall next to the DSO's home, the Meyerson Symphony Center.
Officials at the opera company had been annoyed when the DSO scheduled the Puccini knowing that the Dallas Opera had already booked it.
"We looked at our presentation and their presentation within a year," said Doug Adams, the DSO's president and CEO, "and it didn't make sense. So we're making the programming change.
"I would like to start off with our new neighbor in a real spirit of cooperation."
Patrons who have already purchased tickets for the DSO's Madame Butterfly may keep their seats for the revised program or call 214-692-0203 to exchange tickets.

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- The conductor of the Santa Fe Opera is stepping down.

Edo de Waart, who has been chief conductor at the opera since last year, cited family and health reasons.

"My decision to leave, although difficult, was made because I wish to spend more time with my family, and summers afford that opportunity," de Waart said in a statement released by the opera Friday.

John Adams, composer of operas including "Nixon in China," "Doctor Atomic" and "The Death of Klinghoffer," says he gets grilled by airport immigration officers whenever he flies home. In a story in the Sunday Guardian (UK), based on a BBC Radio 3 interview, Adams said he thinks he's on the Homeland Security list because of "Klinghoffer," about a 1985 Palestinian Liberation Front hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro.

In the interview, Adams likened the current American atmosphere to the McCarthy era in the 1950s. "Congress has continued to sign off on these Patriot Acts that continue to clip the wings of human rights," he said.

The Metropolitan Opera is presenting a new production of Adams' "Doctor Atomic," about the development and explosion of the first nuclear bomb, through Nov. 13. It will be transmitted in HD to movie theaters around the country at noon (CST) on Nov. 8.

From the Associated Press:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Legendary performances at the Metropolitan Opera of "La Boheme" with Luciano Pavarotti and "Otello" with Placido Domingo will soon be available over the Internet for the first time.

The Met plans to offer online subscriptions to 120 audio recordings and 50 full-length videos of performances through its Met Player service beginning October 22nd.

Users will be able to listen to and watch 170 full-length operas, including recent high-definition broadcasts.

Subscriptions will cost $14.99 a month or $149.99 per year.

The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts has landed its third-largest contribution and a new, improved design for outdoor spaces around the Winspear Opera House and Wyly Theatre, now under construction.

Check out Scott Cantrell's story about it online here late Sunday or in the paper's GuideLive section Monday.

Also online
• See our interactive map and timeline of Arts District developments

Dallas may be seen as a step down from the Big Apple, but George Steel, newly-named general director of the Dallas Opera, will be making some big steps up. Columbia University's Miller Theatre, which he's headed for the last 11 years, has a budget of just $3.5 million, vs. the Dallas Opera's $12 million. And at the Miller Theatre he's only had to fill 688 seats vs. the 2,200 in the Winspear Opera House, due to open in Oct. 2009.

And then there's the question of aesthetic fit: "He is also leaving a theater known for imaginative contemporary- and early-music programming on the vaguely bohemian Upper West Side of Manhattan," Daniel J. Wakin writes in The New York Times, "for a Texas company whose approaching season is a study in war horsemanship."

In the Times story, Steel likens himself to Gerard Mortier, the provocative Belgian impresario who's leaving the Paris Opera to head New York City Opera. "I will certainly be the Mortier of Dallas," Steel told Wakin, "and then some."

The Dallas Opera badly needs some new vision and energy--and a formidable fundraiser. Let's hope Steel proves to be the man of the hour, or decade.

In a surprise move, the Dallas Opera has ventured outside the world of opera for its next general director. George Steel, 41, executive director of Columbia University's Miller Theatre in New York, will take the Dallas job Oct. 1. The job has been vacant since Karen Stone stepped down in September 2007. In 11 years at the Miller Theatre, Mr. Steel has been hailed for innovative programming, ranging from early music to jazz, ballet and contemporary opera, and bringing in new audiences.

Read the rest of the story here, then come back and tell us your thoughts.

Nicola Rescigno, 92, who with Lawrence Kelly, founded the Dallas Opera in 1957, died
in a hospital in Viterbo, Italy, on Monday morning. He had fallen previously and was awaiting surgery for a broken femur. His death was confirmed by his nephew, Joseph Rescigno of New York. Lawson Taitte is writing an obituary for GuideLive.com. Watch for updates here.

From Scott Cantrell:

Kyle MacMillan, arts critic of The Denver Post, and I had a chuckle the other night about his passing along used orchestra CEOs to me. Two from his years at the Omaha World Herald came to cities where I was working: Roland Valliere in Kansas City, Fred Bronstein in Dallas. Now he's sending the Colorado Symphony's Doug Adams back to Dallas (Doug was DSO general manager in the late 1990s-early 2000s.) He has good words, by the way, for Doug's work in Denver.

From Scott Cantrell:

In the good old days, when newspapers had 25 percent profit margins, the Santa Fe Opera press room used to be packed with eminent scribes. The contingent has slimmed considerably in more recent years, but this week's group includes George Loomis from The Financial Times, Anthony Tommasini from The New York Times, Anne Midgette from the Washington Post, Sarah Bryan Miller from the St. Louis Post Dispatch and Kyle MacMillan from The Denver Post, plus writers from magazines and blogs.

From Scott Cantrell:

Spent an hour and a half Thursday getting a tour of the biennial art show, this year consisting entirely of site-specific, temporary installations. Will go back either this afternoon or Saturday really to absorb it. Beyond the museum, the show also includes installations around the city, even in the parking lot at the Santa Fe Opera.

From Scott Cantrell:

It tells you something about Santa Fe Opera's repute that a number of operatic movers/shakers are here this week. I've spotted William Mason and Anthony Freud, general directors of, respectively, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Houston Grand Opera, and Matthew Epstein, an eminence grise of casting who has worked with a number of companies. In particularly, opera directors come here to check out the up-and-coming young singers Santa Fe cultivates in its extensive apprentice program. The Dallas Opera's Jonathan Pell will be here in another week or so.

Santa Fe Opera is one of the world's best places for people-watching. Dallasites and Fort Worthians can count on seeing plenty of people they know -- walking around downtown, too. At Thursday's Billy Budd I ran into, among others, two SMU music profs: singer Virginia Dupuy and organist/harpsichordist Larry Palmer, both teaching in summer courses in the area. I also ran into two friends from my Kansas City years. Cynthia Siebert runs KC's Friends of Chamber Music, one of the classiest series of its type anywhere. (I keep begging her to start a satellite series in Dallas.) Jerry Harrington runs an art-house movie theater.

From Scott Cantrell:
Don't tell anyone, but the REAL reason I love coming to Santa Fe is to get my fill of New Mexico red chile. It's not at all like Texas chili, or however you spell it: e: no beans or meat (although some cooks do include just a LITTLE finely ground pork or beef). It's basically dried New Mexico chiles ground into powder, mixed with water or stock and cooked with seasonings. It's dark red and often pretty fiery, with a wonderful earthy undertone. (Green chile here is a kind of stew with chopped up green chiles.)

From Scott Cantrell:
Had a fun interview today with Laura Claycomb, a Highland Park High School and SMU grad who's singing one of the lead roles in Handel's Radamisto Friday. (Look for a story on her in the Saturday GuideLive and a review of the opera Sunday.)

Based in Europe for a decade and a half, she's got a major international career going. I guess you'd call her a lyric coloratura, with a clear, sweet soprano that can toss off the busiest writing as easily as we mere mortals wash our hands.